1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to systems and methods for organizing output. Specifically, the present invention relates to collators for organizing output, such as printer output.
2. Description of the Related Art
Printers are employed in various demanding applications including mass printing, document publishing, and so on. Such applications often demand specialized mechanisms for organizing printed output, such as print job separators and sorters or collators.
In many printing systems, documents are output to a single output tray. A user then manually sorts or separates printer output by printer job or other criteria. Unfortunately, manual print job separation and output sorting is undesirably tedious for many applications.
To facilitate printer output organization, rear-mounted collators with accompanying print media flippers may be employed. In an exemplary laser printing system with a rear-mounted collator, print media, such as paper, often exits the printer fuser near the top front of the printer and then passes toward the back of the printer. In these systems with rear-mounted collators, print media output from the fuser is then flipped and fed to a collator. The media flipper ensures that the output print media appears properly oriented in the output bins associated with the collator. Unfortunately, media flippers are often expensive, and the rear-mounted collators are often undesirably bulky and lack customizability. In addition, paper trays of rear mounted collators often do not efficiently accommodate lengthy print media, such as legal documents, and may interfere with user-access to printer access doors positioned below the print media output bins.
Alternatively, front-mounted collators are employed. Print media output bins associated with these collators often face toward the rear of the printer to minimize space occupied by the printer. However, the collator blocks user-access to the printer output from the front of the printer, and consequently, printer output must be accessed from the side or rear of the printer, which is less user friendly. For example, to facilitate user-access to the printer output, the printer may require sideways or backward positioning, which is undesirable for certain applications.
Hence, a need exists in the art for an efficient system and method for organizing printer output that facilitates user-access to the printer output and that neither requires a media flipper nor requires sideways or backward printer orientation. There exists a further need for a system that can efficiently organize printer output; efficiently accommodate print media of differing lengths; and allow easy access to printer access doors.